Halfway around the World to Find the Picturesque

“Youzihhu-- “Youzihhu sits within a natural basin on the eastern side of the mountain beside a deserted aboriginal village. Ruins of early stone dwellings with their vacant fields bring about a sense of vicissitude and uncertainty. Looking down at it from the high point of the entrance road, you can see randomly scattered stone houses with mottled brick walls nestling close to the mountains, which is a picturesque addition to this site.”

I descended the road into the “natural basin” halfway realizing that I simply would have to push my bicycle back up and dumped it into some weeds. I had to believe that it was such an undesirable product that no one would ever steal it, for I did not want to walk back to the guest house. On my first test ride, “around the block,” I broke the peddle clean off the arm. This was the first bike of two, provided for free from the guesthouse. Neither bike was very good and as I have not found a way to rent motorcycles without an international driver’s license, they were my only means of transportation.

On this island, which really is a piece of jagged volcanic rock, and as far as I could see, eternally beaten by the light gray waves, the roads (or, rather, road), fluctuated from steep, twisting climbs unto the higher plain, and the slow, peaceful undulations of the waving, long grass hills where nymph like deer hung about and roamed in packs at night. For the latter terrain, having a bicycle was rather nice, but concerning the former, the bicycle was not built for such strain, especially with my leg length. The bikes' seats were built so low that even at the very lowest point of the leg thrust, my knee was barely below my waist.

So like I said, I threw it into the weeds. When I reached the beach, the basin with the ruined houses, and the waves that fell stumbling in over the scattered volcanic rock, I went sort of distracted for several hours. I think I lost track of the time. Volcanic rock is very easy to climb, and so I took advantage of this—following waterfalls up the mountain. Roaming out as far as I could on the rock formations that extended out into the sea. After a while the continuous high wind and threshing of the sea seized to seem terrible any more. Now I felt the perspective of the rock, or of the sea from a greater distance—a sense of calm and almost claustrophobic peace. Here I was with a bike, an entire island, and an entire day—what to do!

The first night I arrived, I, along with the six other guests, and the uncle of the family who ran the guesthouse, went out driving on scooters, even though it was a constant chill factor. It was not cold necessarily when looking at a thermometer, but the wind was so strong and constant that any body warmth produced was immediately striped away, so that after awhile, the fire inside slowed considerably and without eating—fuel—it turned an inescapable cold. We rode about on the highlands with a huge flashlight and went looking for deer, just like people would do back in Pennsylvania for shits and giggles, but here the scene was slightly different—slightly eerie. A bunch of silent people in the mid-twenties, driving around on scooters, neither excited nor bored, stopping every once in a while because something like eyes flashed back in the night.

We stopped by some other places. Though we were on the highlands, we somehow found ourselves in a cave with candles lit, and a large bowl of fruit set out on an alter. A pear was lying on the floor so the uncle, when he entered, replaced it respectfully. This was Quanyin’s cave. In a guidebook before I came, I had read something like that a man had been washed ashore and woke up in this cave and saw a cave formation that looked to him to be an emanation of the deity—thus the shrine to this day. There was a similar story like this I remember when I was on the coast of Thailand, but it wasn’t Quanyin—it was a giant penis. The cave in Thailand was filled with giant penises offered by the local fishermen.

The cave was rather odd. Water running about under us, and above us you could hear the wind and the laurel like shrubs dancing in the wind. Through much of the tunnel and cave, the rock simply was overhanging us, and there was space that you could see up into the vegetation above and, occasionally, the stars. The roots were growing where our heads were. As I said, it was rather strange.

I was accompanied by six other people in their twenties, two couples who all knew each other, and two girls who didn’t know anyone else. All of them were from Taipei and had come to Ludao for one night. I thought this strange for two reasons. The first is because the travel expense is higher than the expense it is to stay on Green Island (Ludao) and the other is the ferry ride over—basically, the most miserable fifty minutes of your life. Plastic bags are stuffed into the seat pouch in front of EVERYBODY by several attendants with un-humored features. The most vivid image I walked away with was seeing the attendants, walking hither and thither, making trips to the public, central trashcan, with sloshing plastic bags of various muddy mixture. I did not look forward to leaving Ludao.

In the caves, the uncle was explaining various other formations that over time have been identified as resembling over things. I was a little bored and more interesting in the wind above me and feeling strange, but every once in a while I asked one of the girls what he was talking about because she knew English very well. She would give thoughtful one word responses, so I was a little put off, and maybe she wasn’t really listening as well. I let my eyes look at the rock and make my own impressions. I was never a big one in looking at clouds and saying what I saw. I have very often let my fancy play with clouds, but to say, “that looks like an old man sleeping,” never really seems like a good idea.

I thought that at any moment I would find something—see the rock move, or to see something so horrific, frozen into the rock, something someone had never seen before but that was undeniably there, that I would scream and frighten the entire party, but soon after we left, and I never experienced that possibility.

On my bike, back up from the basin, I made my way around the island, past the various outlooks, and then past the beaches where many people go snorkeling. At this time of year, and especially with the cold weather, no one was doing anything more than stopping and looking. I made my way past the hot springs—my central driving force for coming here—where Teacher Minnie told me she would get up at 3 in the morning to go soak in the waters and wait to watch the sunrise. It’s one of only three hot springs in the world where the water is salted. I actually didn’t get a chance to go. 3 am was a little early for anyone at the guesthouse to take me halfway around the island, and though we tried to go another time, a misunderstanding and a rather perplexing situation denied me the opportunity to fulfill that chance to sit in those waters. Until another time. Here is a photo of a road sign.

Going to Green Island

Concerning the first day of the New Year, 2009

Well, it was a new day of a new world as I sat proud in my seat, the world rushing by outside my train window, and nothing in the world to indicate that the calendar had made its magnificent change other than my ticket stub with six novel digits, newly stamped. I thought it absurd that people made resolutions on this day—more absurd that they chose to stay to the last clinging fragments of the last dying day. I had been in bed. Actually, I heard the rat-tat-tat-tat of fireworks that lasted for, oh, maybe two minutes, until the fuse (and whoever's interest) burnt through. Then again peace, leading, racing me to morning, where I awoke, stuffed some clothes into my bag, wiped down my table and counter tops, and entered outside into a deserted world.

The streets were mostly empty so early as the sun was still quietly low somewhere behind all that foggy sky. Even if the world had not opened up right then to greet me, I felt just fine, peddling down the road, the wind particularly bitter this morning as the winds had changed sometime the evening before. I think it’s just commonsense to do the proper thing, and just as someone that you’ve anticipated coming from far away—perhaps from across the sea—you make sure to greet them at the door, well dressed, and with a cup of tea. So we should greet the New Year. And instead of being jinxed by the last, dizzy from its departure—altogether missing the entrance of the next—why not anticipate the inevitable? So—early morning—flight on my bicycle down empty roads (the first and simplest kind of flight). No wonder it was two men with bicycles who discovered the path to the sky.

A ticket waited for me at the train station window. In that last, difficult and troubled year, already a half day ago, I had been told that there were no tickets left to go where I wanted, that I needed to have had reserved a seat a month in advance. But not so this year. This morning there were tickets for everyone. And then, eventually, on the train, the sky opened up and the sun showed herself already risen and dressed. I was very excited and it took me nearly an hour to close my eyes. I noted everything that passed—an orange grove, a patch of mustard field (the only two colors in that bleak landscape.) The warehouses and farm buildings looked like rusty electrical fixtures on a circuit board. I noted everything that passed then sat the journal down. I had seen to things—the sun was well greeted and well on its way (and well it should be, for it was to wake my neighbors, across the seas).

A picture from my train window taken later in the day, and on the other side of Taiwan, which seemed composed of nothing else but mountains, breaks of gravel plains made by streams, and a series of tunnels that became so often that they seemed more real than the landscapes outside. The train's vibrations, leaving the cocoon of the tunnel, radiated out into silence, like suddenly stumbling onto an impossible dream in the middle of a peaceful night.

Recovered from the Annals of Warren Wilson College

A Natural Tea Seminar
Location, Warren Wilson Campus

What great fortune has occurred when three such men of rarity should in this world meet and fall to that civil occupation of drinking tea! Behold their subtlety and their ease! Behold the strange beauty of language they employ to equal their subject’s qualities! Behold as they mark every twist and turn of the tea’s taste—chasing it to that other side of eternity where perception and beauty escape even our simplest thoughts! And Oh what thousand-fold blessing it is that their experiences have been recorded in the annals of history, their exact methods, procedures, and correspondence described thus:

Brewing Parameters:

Amount - 0.25 ounces of Nanqiao shan Pu-erh (Factory: Mengyang Guoyan, 2006)

Water – filtered tap water, Swannanoa, Hun’s house, 106 Cabin Hill.

Amount – 120m

Water Temp – Boiled then cooled for 2 breathes

Method - Gongfu

Brewing Vessel - Yixing Teapot 150ml

After passing around several cakes, we decided upon a cake that we all agreed smelled of a certain mustiness that yet contained in its darkness the scent of flowers. “Sauntering Breeze” did honors as tea server, while "La Tea Doe" provided us with refreshments. And I, "Felt-Leaf," humbly took it upon myself to observe and record everything that took place.

The first infusion (twelve seconds):

We lifted our sniff cups and this is what arose. La said, “sweet honey incense;” S.B. said, “fermenting honey;” and I added, “very hot plastic spatula.” “Yes,” we said. “It is all of these things.”

Then we took sips and the taste provided quite another dimension to our senses. I said, “A very tight flavor”—here I could not find words, and then I could—“slightly bitter like a steamed lotus root.” My friends concurred, La reminiscing, “a light-green taste, a little bit of sharp bitterness—just a little sweet to keep you interested,” while S.B. attempted summation in the true spirit of science saying only, “Slightly dry. Sweet at the end. Light-bodied.”

So much to be said in one brewing of one tea! What more can be said? Yet the rise and fall of the taste in a Pu-erh tea is like the rise and fall of tides of all the world’s oceans, containing in it all of God’s creations. As it was once said, “Eternity is in love with the productions of time.” Likewise, I say now, Tea is in love with its productions in the mind of man.

The second brewing is finished, fifteen seconds by S.B.’s count:

La began by saying, “The aroma has a stronger green smell, with a sweet smell, like” (here, he was confident and smiled) “like General Tsao’s Imitation Chicken.” No argument there. I added that I still thought it reminiscent of that strange warm plastic spatula smell as when it has rested too long on the skillet, but this brew was less intense.

While the scent remained intangible to our normal vocabulary, the taste we agreed was very distinct. La began again, “Blank dryness—‘free-of-taste’ dryness—filled in with bitterness.” “An all-coating bitter effect upon the tongue,” I said, “and still light and dry.” “Dry…drier—bittersweet,” said S.B.

It seems, upon memory, that we were descending into the depths of taste, unguided by any hand. Led only by our instinct and will, into that darkness of tea, without thoughts and concerns that we might not return, that in this bitterness there could be Lethian forgetfulness… Yet surely all that sinks below arises once again.

Third brew, 19 seconds:

Very adamant, “Honey molasses!” La then told me that he outright rejects the reality of it smelling like a very hot plastic spatula. I suspect—but I cannot prove—that La is simply being contrary, led astray by the amount of tannin in his tea. I respectfully maintained that it did, indeed, to me, “smell like hot plastic.” S.B., eyes closed, smiled from over his cup as it came to him. “Very hot spatula,” he said, “stirring honey.”

The taste: “A throbbing dryness; it will make your teeth ache with bitter,” F-L. “A mirage of wetness to start; a bitter dryness to finish,” said La. S.B. said, with a confused look on his face, after smacking his lips, “like…dry.”

The fourth brew was 21 seconds.

Was it the wastes of the day—the wastes of the tea talking? Were we men then—or like the flies drunk on an early spring day with the delight of resurrection in the sunshine? The smell: I said, “maybe like wet hair.” La contended: “dry enough to reach my nose!”

In the taste, the bitter lifted, I thought, “awake in its intentions—sweet and wet.” La concurred though troubled, “wet with an oceanic swell, but I still can’t shake the dryness.” S.B.: “smooth sailing ambrosia.”

The fifth brew was 30 seconds.

Yet again, change. While the aroma to S.B. and myself reminded us of shiitakes, to La he objected to say that it smelled, “the same ol’,” but also, “smells wet.”

Then there was nothing but poetry left in us. Or perhaps, all the poetry had left us. As the tea had washed itself of life, so had, in our expression, come and gone the soul of just formulation. I could simply write in my pages, “A residual innocence left from the complete dispersal of the bitterness; the sweet and wet of the earlier brew is all that’s left.” And then to say something so charming I could not deny, La went on to say, “like bathing my tongue in shallow, sun-baked water.” S.B. murmured, “faint and warm…sugarcane.”

Yunnan Junming Rulpinhao 38888

Well, out of the few passions that regularly send me to my blog (frustration, homesickness, and new discoveries being the only others that I can think of), the euphoria following a good session of drinking tea is perhaps the most consistent, which is the state I am in right now, a delicious coaxing puerh state, purchased for near twenty dollars in Malaysia.

In our conversations, Hun and I have talked about the need to categorize our puerh teas somehow. It is easy to forget a tea once you've put it on the shelf and it gets buried with a half dozen others. Besides, the pleasure of puerh tea is that it ages, and a history of a tea's flavor would be interesting as well as useful. Hun said that he had begun to insert a slip of paper next to each tea brick after revisiting it, and, on the slip of paper, he would write all the information that he knew about its manufacturing and year of cultivation. He also took the time to include brewing as well as tasting notes.

Taking his lead, tonight was my smashing of the champaign bottle and taking the first step of diligence in journaling, for the sake of my future edification, the brewing, tasting, and manufacturing notes of the first of my puerhs. Hun and I like to think of this process as scientific, due to the seriousness of precision, but, in truth, it is as an account as subjective as an oil, landscape painting, which, again, is not the most subjective thing either. Three painters will differ in tonations here and there, a winging bird that one of them captured, while the other was indifferent scratching his butt, and the other taking extra care to ennumerate the trees that flank one hillside, and so on. But hardly will anyone disagree that the three products are anything but the same vision. To re-describe, the difficulty of transcribing onto a page, with an inadequate langauge, what occurs on the tongue drives one to borrow both from science and art. One tries to borrow from the former objectivity, control, and a special attention to nuance. From the other, one hopes to lie upon beauty's wing, a plea to the muse that the indescribable may, this time, be described.

I've also included a photo. Though not beautiful, I hope it is helpful. I call what you see, "my command center;" it is here that I drink tea, write, work on my Chinese, eat, and push the little red buttons that send bombs hurtling to my classroom. One last note, the shorthand "js" means "Joe seconds," which means the amount of seconds of each brew that I counted in my head (scientific?--yes!). Without further ado:

Yunnan Kunming Rulpinhao 38888
Purchased in Malaysia July 2008, puerh from 2007. Seller said that it would be pleasing to the taste of beginner puerh drinkers so long as it was served in quick brews. Also a good tea let age.

10/20/08 Taiwan
2nd break of the cake: The cake, like before, is quite hard, and it is necessary to use a pick to loosen the brick and create fissures. Using my small teapot, and there is one good-sized chunk of tea in there, so anyway it looks like a third pot of dried leaves but it is hard to tell. I flushed it once with hot water to clean the leaves and immediately drained it.

1st brew (14js) - First sense is a shy sweetness, followed by puerh tea's milky flavor with an accompanying slime that coats the mouth; a bitterness hovers like the taste of coffee through milk, but does not get the chance to intrude. I would also add that though the combination of coffee milk may be an adequate analogy to this taste, it is not so blunt and rude as that particular mix actually is, but rather maintains a lightness that is hard to match.
2nd brew (17js) - Sparkling and alive this time, a physical feeling actually spreading right to above my eyes (and brain?), a stronger intensity of the bitterness--not more bitter--but definitely sharper, almost sour, a sour milk or a sour stout beer. Color near that of the teapot but, of course, very bright. (Personal note: the smell reminds me of a friend's--Josh's, for those who know--old house.)
3rd brew (15js) - Absolutely tangy, attacking specifically the top back part of the tongue. Flavor more vegetable, I would say, than anything else.
4th brew (19js) - Noticing a dryness in the aftertaste, especially on my lips.
5th brew (half a minute) - Quite different here. Was really pleasant to swig back. The flavor finally found expression and freedom from the tang, milk, and bitterness as they subside into supporting roles. Really pleasant.
6th brew (half a minute) - Yep, change noted above has fully taken place. As Lateef would say, "the clouds broke," and it's smooth sailing from here on out.
7th-11th brews (indefinite) - Over a coal and/or vegetable flavor. Same as the sixth brew.

Well, there's the last brew still waiting for me at my command center (I just poured the hot water in and left it--at this point it doesn't matter). However, please note that it is the eleventh brew. Try doing that to your earl grey and see if there is anything left. Bye-bye.

The Changhua Thirty

This Saturday afternoon, Sepetember the 27h, I found myself in Lukang, a town five dollars and 2 hrs north from Chiayi City, and its attraction is its resemblance to "old Taiwan." It has several important, or at least beautiful, temples and the town is pretty much maped out for the hundreds of visitors that come weekly, if not daily, to tour the streets. I saw a lot of young parents with their young children, retirees, and even high school kids just hanging out, eating the street fair, and wondering about the roads as if they were in one big mall. I can't say too much about my experience there though because soon after I arrived I found myself going home. A lady who I was having tea with (all my adventures seem to end this way) told me that a big typhoon was coming and that they wouldn't be open the next day or on Monday. This made me reconsider my plans to spend the night in Lukang for one night. What if, Sunday morning, I could not get back? What if the storm was such that school would begin Monday, but I wouldn't be able to get back? I had stupidly left my cell phone because at the time of leaving my progression of thought was this: "my bag is too heavy--I'll leave my cell phone." It didn't seem a problem at the time. I don't use the cell phone and if there was an emergency I could always use another phone. It didn't occur to me that any number that I would need to call was--you probably guessed it--programmed into my phone and not something I know off the top of my head. All this pushed me to turn home prematurely. I guess--and this is the really stupid part looking back--the typhoon wasn't such a big surprise even though it seemed like it at the time. I had originally intended to head up to Ali Shan but had been unable to get a train ticket because the train had closed due to the typhoon. Perhaps I exaggerated the reality of this: I considered that those who were in charge were overly sensitive to the rail's teeny tracks and the happenstance of mudslides. This, the clouds that morning setting out, and the considerable gusts of winds all should have reconciled me to staying in Chiayi, but I was irreconcilable. I needed to get out of Chiayi and spend some time elsewhere.

This brings me to the point of waiting at the trainstation at five o'clock with nothing to do. My train was to come in forty-five minutes and then I remembered something I've been meaning to do. As a casual observer of Taiwanese fashion, which I'm really quite interested in, I've been tempted to take photos of interesting clothing I see on the street, something like I saw in the NY Times where a photographer showed a series of photographs he took of self-designed and made clothing outfits that he saw "on the runways of the streets of New York." But I also have been wanting to attempt a series of shots of some portion of the city taken from the same position at exact intervals of one minute for the duration of thirty minutes to one hour. When completed it has a shocking character, throwing question upon the construction of time, narrative, and place. As you watch characters--nameless of course--who wander in and then out of the frame you begin to realize just how long a minute is. But what is more shocking is to see a character again and again, someone who disappears and returns. The constriction of time (only able to see captured shutters onto what is actually a constantly evolving setting) and space (the borders of the photo are predetermined--if a murder occurred to the side of the camera one would never know but would have to impute what is occurring from the reaction to the events) draw into question our knowledge of narrative. In a completely voyeuristic fashion, the seat of observation holds no privileged position but must feed on what is accidentally captured. On one hand, the observations one can make are nearly limitless and the speculations are a hundred times more tantalizing without having to devolve into romanticized sensations. Who is that person partially out of the frame? Who is standing just outside the frame that could give you that one additional clue? Who has just walked by the camera the second before the magic one minute has passed? I think the accumulation of the effect is the appreciation of how rich any one place at any one moment can be--how rich our own lives are without necessarily realizing that we are an actor to some unseen eye, a view which we can appreciate but not completely satisfy in this world of mirrors. When I look at the series, I am reminded of Hogarth or any traditional mural painting, but here is something that is even more fascinating to me because what you see here is real and unfabricated.

I can't take credit in anyway for this series, however. The idea really comes from my friend who has studied art at NYU and she once showed me a one hour series she had done, which was much more incredible than what I produce here. She called her series, if I remember right, A New York Hour; so in that tradition I call this one, the Changhua Thirty. Do enjoy. One warning, however: The pleasure of these images is to study them in detail so it would be best to view the images large, perhaps in a slide show and manually click through them. It is also part of the play to flip backwards and forwards to try and make connections, so I do say now that if your connection is slow and constantly have to wait for an image to appear, it might not be the most interesting thing. The link is to the side.

From "CHANGHUA THIRTY"

Moon

"I have read of men who, when forced by their calling to live for long periods in utter solitude--save for a few black faces--have made it a rule to dress for dinner in order to maintain their self-respect and prevent a relapse into barbarism." Eskine Childers, The Riddle of the Sands

Tonight is not moon festival but people are nevertheless celebrating, perhaps compelled by the mildness of the typhoon so far. On the TV, it appears that a giant white dollop of whip-cream is consuming the entire island of Taiwan, but here an apprehensive wind has been rattling windows, searching up and down the streets, calling forth its warning, but with no follow through, and so the people all day have been going about their business with one eye to the sky and the other into their concerns of Saturday. Even I was willing to take my chances to ride out to the single English bookstore in town and brave the possibility of imminent rainfall.

When darkness fell I ventured across the road with a bundle of clothes wrapped in my bath towel and slipped through the unlocked green gate of my school. It is eerie to be there at night with such a dubious purpose as washing my clothes, but, forced by the habits of single life, I am sometimes only ready at unusual hours for this chore. But tonight it was also partially beautiful. The entire day of wind and bursts of light rainfall had left the evening cool and calm; crickets sang and the street light shone half-heartedly through the playground trees, setting a stage that would be perfect for the chance and mysterious encounter to a heinous crime or horrible secret, such as when the boy in Treasure Island innocently enough falls asleep in the apple barrel to then overhear deathly dealings.

But I quickly left these settings for the city streets. While am not particular fond of the rain or the fact that it is usually only at night that I have time to wander, I do believe that the city is so much more clearly a city at these times, as if the wet and night were elementary to the city's constitution, commanded from the beginning when those that had the power chose the build of everything from the tiger to the lamb.

But tonight the air was thicker than usual, for in every house there stood a group of people with something like enjoyment set on their faces, and they spent their time looking out onto the streets with skewers of meat in their hands and congregating about a crude, footstool-sized metal grill. The smells and mood were those that I had been apart of the night before and so I did not stop or loiter, fearing too the generosity that these families would perhaps bestow upon me as they quite naturally seem to do, but I wished to press on, stopping only at a small park, which was entirely empty but for a group of boys that quietly but persistently attended to their sport of setting off fireworks some of which violently shot horizontally across the earth. This seemed to bother nobody who wandered by and so I let myself to it and listen to the sound of the great city that across its face fireworks were being set off so that in orchestration it sounded something like a expansive pot of popcorn that slowly attended to its task.

Though it seemed like everyone was finding shelter near their grill or setting fireworks off in a park, it was something pleasurable and confusing to see the cars still speeding about the roads, each according to its own mission that no holiday can ever quail. It reminded me of that odd vision of people out on Christmas day and the surfacing realization of people's continuous needs and restlessness, never quailed by the sacred rites we ask it to attend.

I found myself then at my favorite sushi restaurant where I slipped inside, noticing it was crowded and feared immediately being an annoyance to taking up an entire table while dining alone (something that really isn't done here). But I was greeted by the mistress of the place, one of two women who with graceful attention control the operations of the restaurant, by a simple and quiet, "Hello Joe." There were several unoccupied tables in the back where I was led, asked my preference, and then, once seated, was helped through the now familiar menu. I gave my order and waited.

I could have chosen this as my favorite restaurant simply by the quality and price of its food. But I also come here because it is simply inviting; and I'm very often surprised. The staff frequently brings me a small dish I haven't yet tried and in this way I've been introduced to some of my favorite dishes. The first, that I had again tonight, is a simple onion salad. In fact, the only vegetable in this salad is the onion, sliced thinly and a thousand times, the pieces arabesque in a lovely, translucent sculpture. On top are green onion pieces and sesame seeds. However, the bite of the salad is not from the onions, and, if it weren't for the small green onions, the onion flavor would hardly be present at all, the onion serving primarily as a fresh tasting, crisp and cool base for the sesame dressing, seasoned with fresh black pepper, a vinegar, and a combination of sweetness (honey?) and lemon. Sometimes, this dish in other restaurants is seasoned by flaky brown pieces of garnish, something resembling in fact dried bits of onion skin. I'm told that this is actually certain fish scales that are used as seasoning, but despite this their taste is earthy, and in any case, I prefer the salad without. Other dishes I had tonight also were favorites, including something they call zhu pai. Zhu, I know, is pork, but I do not know what "pai" is. What is issued forth though is a thin piece of meat that has a crust and has been fried. It is universally served with a dollop of ketchup and a dollop of sweet mayonaise which inveritably become mixed together. Sometimes the meat is cooked with garlic flavoring and sometimes not, but it is always served with a very simple and fresh garnish (tonight sprouts) that play a complete opposite to its rich and oily nature.

When I left, it was now rainning well enough and I only had my hat. Also because of the way my shower is set up (really a hose extension from the tub) and because the cieling is somewhat dropped in my bathroom, I must kneel to wash myself thus making my soaps more excessible as well as avoiding the difficulty of bumping my head against the cieling. As a consequence, my knees are sometimes fitful with anything but a slow and ease stride. Because of this I walked slowly, finding the moments when the rain lifted, and pausing each time it renewed its force. At each awning under which I waited, it was impossible to say whether or not I was giving the storm the chance of becoming stronger or was allowing it to blow itself through. And when at moments I was inspired with a mad dash, I could not decide if it was better to do so at a moment of clarity or at sudden heavy rain.

Eventually, I made it home, much more wet, with 12 litres of bottled water that I had purchased at a happy-mart during one escape from the rain. But as soon as I put these down, I dashed out one more time, found myself pulling folds of clothing from that still womb in which they lay, protecting them as I crouched by the warm machine's side against the unclean rain of the sky, and acting in all manners like a furtive figure darting through the shadows of life.

Eureka!: Laws of Displacement

I got my sister's e-mail today at school about a front page someone did about her out west adventure (link here: http://www.dailyinterlake.com/articles/2008/09/01/news/news01.txt). It struck me chiefly by the vivid and glorious photograph of April and Honeychild in relief by the direct American sun. I teared up and looked to find some child or teacher to grab to show it to but none were convenient. But also, as I read through the contents of the article, I began reflecting upon something I remember April writing, whether it was in her blog or in a letter I forget, about the moment when Dana decided to leave the expedition. April likened this feeling to the blind and scary feeling she felt when in an airplane descending into Delhi several years earlier, feeling entirely alone and overwhelmed. Since reading that, I felt, reordered, and wrapped that particular sensation up, and maybe several times I have thought about it since then when I wasn't looking. But today I wanted to think about it some more. I was also provoked by reading various articles on the hurricane that was threatening New Orleans, and reflecting on the feeling those people felt then and now, getting on a bus, without knowing where one was going or if one would ever get back. Surely this sensation is not the point of travel or these types of things, but in fact a painful reoccurring theme of life which is to be avoided. No--the reasons must be many to remove oneself from others or so cryptic one is compelled without any sense at all (or otherwise dictated as in war or in hurricanes).

All of this threw good fodder on a fire that always has coals to me now, the abiding awareness of my separation. Since I've left, many startling things of lesser and greater sorts have happened to make me reconsider my stupidity or brashness for coming out leaving behind my commitments to people at home, which are made automatically through the order of living. With my eyes continually riveted back home by such incidents, it paints a potentially whimsically reality of my decision to live in Taiwan, and I borrow it from one of my favorite authors in his absolutely best book, Invisible Cities. He describes a particularly strange city, one where all the buildings have been built upon tall poles so that nothing ever touches the earth (people sleep in hammocks below their houses). The chief occupation of the residents, besides getting by in this precarious set-up, is a continuous and absorbing examination through telescopes of the earth below; muses the author: "fascinated by their own absence?" If fascinated is not particularly the right word, the oddity for me is equal to look back at a world, through the small hints I receive (nevertheless highly scrutinized) of photos and letters, web-address of front page stories, and all the pleasant and disturbing confetti that makes its way across the sea, and find that they all pertain the same irregular fact that I am not there. Now I may as well quote A. E. Housman,
“Is my team plowing,
That I was used to drive
And hear the harness jingle
When I was man alive?”
But I do not own to have these affectations so great to be much concerned with my absence. Obviously, my absence considers into my image of home now. But the angles and shades of this disposition are many; it also says that the image of myself in Taiwan is one without the healthy presence of my friends and family, and it is their absence which is so conspicuous and not mine. Have the poets written about this? Oh, they have endlessly moaned about their hearts lost in the highlands or wherever their native resort. They have also clamored to proclaim the essential sameness of all diverse nations and seasons. After clamoring about the world, William Saroyan once wrote how shocked he was to find music unchanged, stepping into a music store in some city in eastern Europe and catching a wisp of Mozart and, by God, there it was again. The realities seem many from this side. We do not know why the residents who lived up those long poles were doing what they were doing, looking at the ground, but maybe one day they find out.

A Hair Cut

To celebrate my seventh Saturday on the island and as a natural result of the rate at which hair grows, I decided to get my hair cut. I have been sick (am still sick) which involves an obnoxiously thick and sore head, uneven and inconsistent perceptual ability, and an intermittent but consistent dripping nose. Though I haven't pinpointed the cause of this sickness (I always find myself trying to pinpoint the cause of my sickness, as if every sickness is unnatural and therefore must have a specific cause), I think it has to do with the physiological/psychological response with being here, having finally established myself here in an apartment and job enough so the the initial adrenaline spent upon surviving here has fled, the stress that was always there is finally able to take its toll. This and a few lousy nights of sleep have angered my body and mind for disrupting the balance of a healthy life and making me now sleep fifteen hours a day and wander about like a zombie.

Originally, getting my hair cut was going to be one of those perfect days. I had picked the place specifically because it was right next door to my favorite milk tea shop, and so after a haircut I would march down to the park with a bubble tea mix in my hand and have a good old, relaxed way with it. (Bubble tea for those who don't know is a novelty drink that I haven't yet grown tired of. Mixed into a sweetened cup of milk tea, the "bubbles" are actually small balls between the size of pebbles and marbles made out of tapioca. Many people do not like bubble tea and it strikes me as very much like bubble gum, which I don't like. The tapioca is pleasantly indistinct in its taste. The real pleasure is afforded by their springy soft texture in the mouth and also the extra thick straw that is provided to suck them up with the tea. The first time I tried bubble tea I did not know that there were "bubbles" inside and somehow delighted by the absurdly thick straw took a big swig and the pressure induced by a ball in the pipe shot into my mouth like a bullet and sent me into fits of coughing. After that, I learned to befriend this relationship and have enjoyed the drink now and then ever since. However, an ever better mixture that is sold at such ubiquitous said tea shops is a sweet red tea with vanilla ice cream in it---oo-la-la, it's good.) But a planned day is just a good recipe for a bad day as it is for a good day, and, already a bit sick and definitely more than averagely woozy from all the sleep, I walked into the hair shop not really sure about anything--not really even sure if I needed a haircut or not. But I made some rather detached observations about the time I had been here and how long I had been without a hair cut and also recalling some comments my boss made about looking better with short hair, and so I was somewhat armed with certainty when I put my nose to the glass doors, somewhat bewildered and annoyed when I had to push closer and closer, standing there like an idiot, before they slid sideways by their automatic motion. No one was in that cool place except for the three ladies there sitting in the chairs, and they quickly got up and seemed to circle me and somehow I was in a chair and was being massaged and was being asked, "this is okay ma?" If I was somewhat armed with a certainty that I needed a hair cut, I was absolutely ill-prepared to speak any Chinese, which was really okay, I mean, what is there to say that you can't motion for with your hands? All I managed was to respond to one lady who, I finally gathered, was asking me if I knew how to speak Chinese. Again, no problem there, my look of complete bewilderment told her volumes more than I can yet articulate in her native tongue. It is indeed an experience to know all that can be done and more without a necessary understanding of anything.

As I sat there, being massaged, I couldn't help various thoughts and doubts flicker through my mind. I thought, where are the scissors? where are the gels? When I told Jeff that I was going to get a hair cut earlier that week and if he had any suggestions, he said only that basically every place was a modeling salon and that the only risk was that sometimes they were fronts for more lucrative employments that occurred in back rooms for more money and less clothing. But I let this pass because there was certainly no danger here. But I should say that there is something in the culture here of such services as salons that somewhat excuses me for thinking this, even in such an obviously innocent place as this. My exhibition through the salon was something of a series of being passed around by young, cooing women who were constantly touching my head, rubbing my shoulders, and saying the few endearments they knew in English: "so beautiful," as they ran their fingers through my hair. It's something akin to the beetlenut mamas, who wear small clothing and sit behind their desks wrapping the disgusting nut-chew mixtures, and for an extra few dollars they will allow costumers to touch their hands as they wrap the nut in spices and leaves. Are they prostitutes? Or is it innocent, suggestive pleasure? And where does the line fall?

I couldn't help comparing this to the last haircut I received in Malaysia. For five ringgit (that's less than two dollars) I had an Indian man cut my hair with nothing but hair-clippers and a comb, and it only took something like a minute and a half. It was a worthy haircut too, I might add, and these women where taking just milimeters with tentative snips, and using feathering scissors, too, and I knew the longer a haircut lasts the more money one is able to demand. First the massage, then the hair cut, then they took me to the back of the room and laid me down in a large leather chair and I couldn't help smiling as they laid my head back into a washing basin--a sensation that never fails to please. The original of such sensation is the one we learn from childhood where we are still able to stretch completely out in the tube and are able to dip our head back until the warm water encompasses our brow. Then after this I was taken again to another chair, with pink towels in a loose turban about my head, and again I was massaged and my hair was combed and blown dry, and all the time I was thinking how much it would be. My general philosophy succumbed to thinking 'whatever will come will come;' this line of thought was somewhat aided by the subduing nature massage has I think. But I was pleased when I finally left, a US ten dollars less the richer, but so much more happier and clean and healthy. A massage was probably exactly what I needed, anyway. As for my haircut, it really isn't so good. The Taiwan aesthetic considering hair cuts or anything else is an appreciation and striving toward softness. I recently had a photo taken for my work visa at a professional photo-taking place (persuaded to do so by my boss) and what arrived was a series of head shots so photoshop-ed that I found myself ridiculously new looking, with toy-soldier red cheeks, an utter and complete softness to my eyes and lips, and the entire photo glowing from the presence of the use of a soft lense. So, today my hair is so feathered it disappears seamlessly into the phenomena about it, as if charged by the electricity inherent in everything. But in several days my hair, as well as my sickness, is sure to subside and return anew to that balance and efficiency of life that continuously shapes the naked shingles of this world.

Thunder and Operatic Pottery

Written in my apartment as if began to rain, Sunday August 10th, transfered to school computer the next day
It began to thunder as I rode home, even though the sky to one side was only partially cloudy, but the thunder was so great and present I trembled to wait for the red light in what seemed like the middle of the intersection, and I found myself looking at the buildings taller than I was. But were they tall enough? Lightning flashed making me jump and again it thundered, and it was very impressive. It made my spine tingle with a divinizing energy that made me involuntarily afraid. I peddled home quickly on my bike newly worked on, much improved by the addition of air to my tires, oil to my chains, and alignment to my front tire. While waiting, I had the boy put a touch of oil to my bike lock that I had to jiggle and jerk to get loose and now I happily only turn the key and the thing swings magically open all by itself. Outside the elevator in the hall to my apartment, it thundered again, and it was like thunder in a movie theatre. I wonder if you know the story they tell of two rival theatre houses in England, each trying to out do the other with their fantastic stage effects. For a particular storm scene in one of its shows, one house would use these large sheets of metal that stage hands shook for the effect of thunder, and this was so well contrived and anticipated that one night the rival theatre company stole these sheets, thus depriving the night’s performance of its success and effectively creating the expression we are all now familiar with: “stealing one’s thunder.”

I discovered new excitement around the city today, which is good for my spirit, as I look toward the next week of school starting tomorrow morning. School isn’t a burden to me—I wouldn’t say that. Much of it is joyful work—but there are moments of great doubt and feelings of inadequacy which I think are probably very natural feelings in this situation, given the task and responsibility of not only teaching small students but also instilling in these students the love and happiness of learning. In such cases, it is very easy to be angry with one’s self for not being greater, quicker, more creative, and so on. And so, nights like tonight, where the shadow of tomorrow already looms or stands in the corner like a man with folded hands—it is quite something to know that there are other things to depend and rely on if school turn out completely successful. With this peace of mind, one is able to accept that tomorrow will come and with it new trouble. One turns their mind to it, and once the acceptance is clean—the sails are made bold, the map consulted—the work becomes something beyond one’s self and turns a better shade of thought.

I biked to the north end of the city to the Chiayi cultural center, which is basically a compound of some museums, music halls, parks with very absurd pieces of art scattered about, and so on. I wandered through some very impressive galleries (and others not so impressive). I was particularly taken with their collection of Kofi (Kopi?) pottery. I’m not very versed on Kofi pottery, but it uses a certain style of glazing that makes everything very bright and glassy—to western sensibilities perhaps too gaudy. But in the right context it is very rich, expressive medium, and more often than not, beautiful shapes are created with it, whether derived from mythology, nature, or traditional Chinese tales. The story scenes depicted with the Kofi style pottery were what startled me. The complexity, intricacy, and business of the scenes matched those same qualities of a Hogarth print, but the gaudiness, the three-dimensionality, and the frequency of mythological creatures and characters was evocative of Grecian friezes in the way they might of looked. Yet on top of this, they held the attention and fascination of the miniature and still-life, like puppetry or a doll’s house. Some scenes were inspired and based upon traditional tales of filiality, emphasizing the balance and harmony between various relationships (father to son, father to wife, son to mother, friend to friend, and so on, the only relationship of equanimity being the latter, and all others relying upon a dynamic of appropriate deference). I am endlessly intrigued by stories told visually in practically all forms in which this occurs (and they occur everywhere whether it is a comic book, eighteenth century English prints, and monastic and traditional murals of any tradition). The richness of narrative and perspective is fascinating to me. (To be honest, it’s sometimes why I think I enjoy the medium of cinema and theatre so well because of how entirely they have consumed this aspect of artifice. It begins with Charlie Chaplin and leads on the whole way out in acting and mise en scene to this day. Hitchcock is another truly great example of purely visual entertainment.)

However, these clay vignettes added to what is usually done in two dimensions such a new intrigue of three dimensionality that you could spent a good long time looking at them from every angle, not wishing to move them a centimeter, designed perfectly to fit the space. Like the Chinese painting, the empty space, the white paper that shines through as part of the painting, is the most defining aspect. Although several were large complex scenes of figures, there were several Kofi scenes that were very simple and yet very evocative. They reminded me of the Dutch painters, Vermeer in particular—a woman rising out of bed caught in the light. Some, slightly between the large scene and the portraits, were scenes that reminded me of the set and action of a Chinese, or western, opera, as if all that noise and confusion were hushed and framed and boxed into these brilliantly colored and imagined scenes. As I said, they also had the fascination a doll’s house has, and so I found myself as much taken with the relationships between the actors in the scene as I was with the growing, flowering plants in equal miniature or the well executed horse’s saddle, and so on.

Along a walk outside, they had various other amusements. Kids were making their own Kofi on a long table. Teenagers were practicing some dance moves to some electronic music. I walked down further to the long line of booths selling orchids and ferns and cactus. The orchids were orchids, and the cacti were cacti, but the ferns were not ferns. They were great, strange, terrible things; some were mounted aloft on square pieces of blackened earth, and they grew, as if on tree bark, and let flow down great antlers of green, or else they curled and toiled themselves outward and inward in odd, yet simple, shapes like pale, oddly colored ears. Some ferns were growing out of pots, some in full spread, others in long searching tendrils, their tongues, like those of butterflies, still tightly curled, pondering their nearing execution of perfection. And yet others hadn’t pushed forth their green stems at all, and what sat in the black soil was a hairy stump, something ugly and soft that would eventually sprout the great spindly fern when conditions were hopeful.

In the last stall I was pleased to smell something familiar. A woman was serving some oolong in a very neat stall with various shelves with tea sets (as well as random tea cups and pictures and pots). Her name was Carol and she spoke English very well, although she denied this when I told her. We talked about the pottery (she collected it and didn’t make it) and the different glazes, the Kofi pottery that I had just seen; but more we talked about the cups in her shop and tea. She was impressed that I liked “Chinese tea,” that all her other western friends didn’t like it. We finished drinking the Ali Shan and she brewed me some organic tea (I didn’t quite understand this, but the “organic” part of it had to do with some worm that ate some part of the leaf) from a place I think she said was Shi Tou, an hour north of Chiayi. She very innocently asked if I liked this tea better or Ali Shan better, but it was something like a test with a very obvious answer. I told her I liked the latter (Shi Tou) better, and it was true. It was better, and much more fragrant, and she smiled and we went on talking. She again—innocently—asked me if I liked tea or coffee. I said I liked them both quite well. Again, here she was in agreement with me and told me that every morning she had to have some black coffee. After every subsequent meal she always made tea—this kind of tea, in this fashion, not just a bottle of tea you buy at the store, she told me. She told me that a true delight on a very hot day was a liter bottle filled with cool water let sit in the fridge with a scoop of rolled oolong for about 8 hours, until the tea completely unraveled. After that—she had no English word to describe it—but it was obviously a very fine thing to drink. It was a very pleasant conversation, and all the while the wind would blow, or I would wander about her shop again, looking at the pieces, and then sit back down again. Another lady sat down to drink with us and we had something of a Chinese lesson; indeed, I have my best lessons over tea, it seems. And at some point, much later, I excused myself. Rain looked very imminent and, as I wheeled home, I found that at least thunder and lightening was imminent, and also that I had a flat tire. But this was happiness I tell you, and somehow or other, I am here again typing, with thoughts of school, thoughts of dinner, thoughts of an hour train ride north to Shi Tou when I next can fix it and so on

If at first you don't succeed...

Written at home on computer Wednesday August 6th, transfered next day in the evening to Imagine Children's School's office computer in the evening time.

Three days of teaching under the belt, as we say. An odd expression, but it feels like to me that I have indeed experienced and kept these days—strapped them—very close to me. They have not been fond for me, rather, difficult. But the emotional experience has been of immediacy and importance. It is very important to me that I make something of teaching small children, not simply for the unselfish reasons that the kids may learn something or that I may delight in their success. There are mundane reasons plenty that keep me at my task. Would I do this if I could walk away tomorrow, I wonder? I don’t know. But there are reasons I do not walk away, and I think it is also good to stick with it. The first adjustment is always the hardest. But that’s maybe a lie. If you’ve ever read the children’s book Holes, perhaps you remember when the protagonist lies down, dusty and worn from his first day digging a hole. Another child tries to cheer him up and says, “the first hole is always the hardest.” But the boy finds out, the next day, when he is again assigned to dig a hole, that it is even more difficult than before. He is still tired from the first day and his hands are covered with blisters that easily break. Again, the third day the trial is worse, and so on until, at some point, though digging the hole each day remains difficult, he finds an ease to it. He finds his body turned lithe and strong, his hands rough and thick, and his method better calculated.

My three morning classes are for kindergarten classes with kids ranging from 2.5 years old to seven years old. The kids in my afternoon class are seven and eight and this is where all my energy is directed. They seem to have abilities below the morning class of six and seven year olds, yet class material and expectations are a lot more advanced. Some are very quick and some are not. I spend a good part of the time splashing about, trying to find firm ground to place stones of knowledge that I let gently into the water only to watch them vanish into he depths of un-understanding. As a result, their attention wanes, they speak Chinese (which in this class is not allowed), they fidget and fight, and so on. My classes often devolve into exercises of classroom management, which I am not happy with. The children spend their time testing my edges, and I spend time myself learning the power I have and do not have over them.

The most important aspect of these past few days have been my attempts between 5 o’clock when I leave the school and eleven at night when I go to sleep (not counting the time that I spend lesson-planning or worrying about my classes) to remove myself emotional, intellectually, and physically from school and find things to do in the city or by myself that are interesting and rejuvenating in their own merits. Although I have not found many people to talk to (the only westerners I have met outside my school were two boys, one from Utah and one from Las Vegas, named Elder Jack and Elder Johnson who sported matching dress-shirts and ties and mandarin translated books of mormon—unfortunately, and as expected, our chance meeting and conversation was singularly directed), I have found things to do.

I have enjoyed wandering about my part of the city, which is a little quieter and quainter than Chiayi central. There is nothing big like shopping malls or movie theatres, but there is a park where old men smoke cigarettes and play checkers or where young mothers go to exercise. I’m recognized everywhere I go but more particularly at several specific restaurants and shops, and at several restaurants I am occasionally pampered with an odd unexpected, free dish, most recently being a red bean popsicle at one place and an Japanese-style onion salad at another (delicious!). There is one teashop quite near by but I find it slightly uninviting and moody, the only time I went, I felt like I was coming into a living room and soon left. I sometimes walk about the residential areas and have even visited some garden stores for plants and flowers to grow. I have not made any friends yet with the local people in my rambles but there is certainly a friendliness, an expectation of certain smiles and nods in my usual haunts. There is not enough language yet to have friends, and so this pushes me on to learn more.

I continue to learn Chinese. This endeavor is supported whenever I go outside, listening to the many conversations that I hear, finding some people who can speak a little English and the attempt to clear up the empty spaces between. I also have a Rosetta Stone program that I work on every night. I have made a chart where I check off certain exercises and though I’m persistent, I am not in the habit yet of rewarding myself with stickers! I also have some flash cards and a very small phrase book. Other than this, it is live and learn.

Of course, there is tea to enjoy and escape to, and though I have not bought any local tea since I did some Ali Shan, I have plenty of puerh tea from Malaysia that I drink often enough in the evenings. I compliment this by listening to opera, and occasionally I also have little snacks I have purchased at local bakeries. One bakery near by has this delicious buttery sesame coated crust cookie that is so flakey. And inside is a red bean paste, some fiber, and a bit of yellow saltiness in the center (a bit of a duck egg, I don’t know). The first bite is wonderful because the middle collapses together and all the sweet and salty flavor is released.

It has been very nice to receive post and I am surprised every day when I get a letter from my sister so far away. I think I have gotten three letters from her, and it is magical to hear her words and dreams and thoughts. Today she even slipped into the envelope some mule braid and snake skin, emblems of another world they seemed! Reading letters is such sustenance to me. It is so tangible that you can lift it in your hands, a preciousness that you can see and count.

There is yet more to do here. I sometimes think that it is loneliness that affects me. Indeed, there is not a lot of conventional friendship or support. But I have my family. I do have my friends still. I have many people that I interact with everyday, too. But I think it is true that it is hard to feel like I am sharing in an experience with somebody; in such cases it is much easier to find meaning and wisdom and support in the things that you do. But it also feels nice to do it alone, like swimming out far into the waves. There is meaning and wisdom and support all around or, as we say, in your self! So it’s something of a process, blistered hands but a gradual unlayering, an eye toward tomorrow when not confounded by the day, a charge to engage, persist, and let go.